The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  Hare’s play was ambitious and large-scale. It was to be performed in the Olivier Theatre, which has a stage as big as a football pitch, with a 1,200-seater auditorium. It is a notoriously difficult space for actors to perform in. A new David Hare play is always an event, but this one even more so because it was known that he had been given access to the inner workings of the Party, and everyone was agog about what it would reveal. John could not have taken on a bigger theatrical challenge. It took real courage at a time when he was emotionally unstable.

  He was also aware that many people would be curious to see if this telly actor would fall flat on his face. Richard Eyre, the director, got some sense of the effect of his fame when he walked down the Strand with John, and everyone, including the traffic, stopped to greet him. On another occasion, when they were doing the film version of the play, he asked John to walk amongst the crowd in a market in Stockport. He was mobbed of course, and filming couldn’t continue. Richard was not used to this kind of recognition with theatre stars. People are more restrained with actors they watch from a distance on a stage than those who appear in their living rooms. John was real and moving in the play and had no trouble projecting his performance into the chasm of the Olivier Theatre, to the surprise of some of the stuffier critics. His fellow actors supported him wholeheartedly. One member of the cast, Clare Higgins, watched John closely. Oliver Ford-Davies and Saskia Wickham demonstrated their support with nightly cuddles when at one point in the play the three of them had to squeeze past one another behind the set. Cuddles were in short supply at home. Partly because I wasn’t there, having fled to Leeds to play in the musical Gypsy.

  6 May

  In France. Must try and pull myself together. I am becoming alienated from the family. My misery is making me utterly self-centred. Little things get blown up out of all proportion. Went to Leclerc and they left me in the café while they shopped. I sat there with a group of French navvies who were constantly commenting obscenely about all the passing girls. I was invisible to them. An old crone in the corner. The girls were ages coming back and I snapped at them when they eventually arrived. It was downhill from then on. I do not have the safety valve of slagging them off to John so it all builds up inside. The focus of our family has gone. And though he didn’t seem to be the strength of the unit, he was. Even when he was at his worst, that in itself was our focus. Trying to appease him, to avoid trouble. All our roles are changed. What am I now? Ellie Jane said, ‘Our family is falling apart and you must be the matriarch.’ I beg your pardon? How do I do that? And it doesn’t seem a very good part to me. What’s the costume? Buttoned boots and corsets?

  Frantic to bury himself in work when Absence of War finished, although he was still doing episodes of Morse, John looked for even more TV. He needed the reassurance that at least his working life was a success. Ted Childs came up trumps again with a series about a barrister called Kavanagh: ‘Why do they keep miscasting me as intellectuals?’ Ted assigned Chris Kelly to produce. He was new to the job, having hitherto been widely known for a TV cookery programme. He started off by daringly sacking one of John’s Scallywags who stepped out of line. Then he redeemed himself by asking Jack Gold to direct.

  It was a new departure for Jack to do a TV series. Since they worked together on The Bofors Gun John had held him in high esteem. They met for lunch at the River Café. It was an awkward meeting. Both men were delighted to see each other again for the first time since their youth, but were too inarticulate to say more than ‘Nice to have you on board.’

  ‘Good to be on board.’

  Jack could not find the words to tell John how much he admired him – that he considered he could express important moral values without sentiment. The others with a similar quality were, in his opinion, Henry Fonda and Spencer Tracy in film, and Ken Stott and Helen Mirren on TV.

  During the filming of Kavanagh QC John was even less able to communicate than usual. He was often mute with misery. His colleague Oliver Ford-Davies received no welcome when he joined the series. John expressed his admiration obliquely one day when the set was a bit noisy and they had a difficult scene to play: ‘Let’s have a bit of hush here. Oliver has won an Olivier award and me a BAFTA, so you’re gonna see some acting. Let’s have a bit of respect.’ In his touchy condition it could be that he felt under-appreciated as well as trying to help Oliver. He sometimes complained that people took him for granted and didn’t credit how hard he worked. One day they asked him to learn a new long speech during the lunch hour. It was done at the end of the day and then everyone packed up and went home. He was distressed when he told me that no one had thought to say ‘Well done’ to him. When I worked with Bette Davis in the film The Anniversary she cowed us all with her Hollywood star behaviour. One day she did a very fine take and I ventured to say, ‘Well done, Miss Davis.’ She grabbed my hand and said, ‘Oh thank you, honey. The nearest I ever get to a compliment is “OK, print it.”’

  It was becoming impossible for me to get through to John. The tempestuous love affair in which I had so revelled had turned rotten and become an ugly, chaotic battlefield. When our first grandson was born in 1995 we were in one of our periods apart and in danger of spoiling the event for everyone. I had to face the fact that we were destroying each other, so I suggested divorce. A bitter failure for both of us. As a last throw I told him that Maggie, my counsellor, knew someone she thought could help John. ‘I bet he lives in Hampstead.’ He did.

  12 May

  Camera crew at Lucky to film interviews for TV tribute. We had to do it but God it was hard. They had to keep stopping for us to pull ourselves together but we went on. We want an accurate portrait of the man. Jack Gold was very sensitive, especially with Jo. ‘I’ve always had to be so careful what I say that I can’t talk now.’

  Got through that. Now for the memorial.

  17

  Change

  JOHN WAS FULLY EXPECTING to pay only one visit to Hampstead to keep me happy, but Udi Eichler was a beguiling man. He had worked in television and was fascinated by John’s complexity. Somehow he won him round and John began to enjoy their meetings. They had much in common: difficult childhoods, they even both had a crippled foot. Udi tried to make John value himself. He encouraged him to spend his hard-earned money on silly pleasures and to look for joy in his life. He analysed why John’s repeated jokes were often to do with leaving. When I said I was going out, even just from the room, he would wail, ‘Doon’t gooo, doon’t goo.’ His reaction to bangs was always ‘And stay out,’ and his ‘Help me, help me’ jokes were potent as well. When he left a room he would often repeat the last words of Captain Oates: ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ Shades of his mother perhaps?

  Udi made John write down his dreams. One reflects his heavy childhood responsibilities towards his brother: ‘Kids on phone. Joanna and Sheila. Maybe Abigail. They’re screaming and shouting “Raymond”. “Oh great.” I take it that it’s Ellie’s baby and say, “Is it the baby, what a good name for the baby,” but they don’t answer.’

  Other dreams were grimmer. ‘Came upstairs. Sheila came out of study. Looks me up and down. I look down. See there is vomit over my jacket and trousers.’

  13 May

  Plucked up courage to sort out some of John’s things. Piles of Stuff magazine’s ‘Great Gear for Men’ from when Udi urged him to buy some treats for himself. They look unopened. Discovered he’d got scores of suits I didn’t know about. He has never even worn them. The times he said before going somewhere, ‘I haven’t got a dark suit’ or ‘I don’t have anything to wear.’ He had dozens of the bloody things. He must have bought them half-price from various TVs – he could never resist a bargain. Or was it because they were so beautiful – mostly Zegna or Armani – that he had to have them even if he never wore them? He is a little squirrel storing up things for a possible rainy day.

  John seemed to enjoy his trips to Hampstead. When I had a session with Udi I expressed my concern that he was not tac
kling the problem of his drinking, which I maintained was central. Udi wrote to me putting me in my place: ‘The kind of work required to help John out of his life-long depressive misery is long and arduous. I have no illusions about the frustrations and anguish of living with such a person. Nevertheless, as his therapist, I must be his advocate, certainly in the one-to-one work.’

  Not long after this, John returned from Hampstead and said he would never go again. I don’t know what triggered his anger with Udi – probably something trivial. Or maybe Udi tried to enter the no go area of John’s drinking. Udi got the Back Treatment. I knew how he felt when he wrote to John: ‘I find it unimaginable that the relationship that we had can have evaporated into a meaningless nothing.’

  Still John did not respond. Udi wrote again: ‘So I live in hope that our paths will cross at some time in the future. Whilst I can imagine your stubbornness (actually a kind of wounded hibernation at your own expense) might well keep you at bay, I hope nevertheless that you might surprise us both and finally respond. Why do I keep on at you in this manner, beyond the call of professional duty? Because I have a personal affection for you which I have allowed to stray beyond the consulting room.’

  John’s efforts to drive people away did not daunt Udi. He continued to try to break John’s behaviour pattern of leaving people before they left him as they surely would when they discovered how unworthy of their love he thought himself. I was in despair. So was John. I tried to stay with him and hold his hand but he was emotionally impossible to reach. Ted Childs noticed his behaviour was ‘a bit iffy’ and others noted he was often in tears. I tried to work. I didn’t choose the ideal job. In 1995 the Almeida Theatre asked me to play in Strindberg’s Dance of Death opposite John Neville. It is a cruel piece about the disintegration of a marriage. I was less able to use my present pain in my role than John. I could not cope with hatred at home and in my work so I did something I had never done before, I let them down by leaving in the first week of rehearsal, pleading illness. By this time all John cared about was his access to alcohol. His little black bag with the vodka bottles never left his side.

  15 May

  Still sorting John’s things very slowly as I can’t take too much at a time. Found a pile of letters from friends that I told him to answer personally. I doubt if he did. I hope they understand. But most poignantly I tackled his black bag, the dread black bag he took to work for his script, etc. In the drinking days it used to clink as he left. In it I found hundreds of fag ends. He must have been secretly smoking and hiding the evidence. There was no need to. I wouldn’t have minded in the least, but I suppose it was part of the pleasure. To be naughty, to have a secret, to do his own thing and sod you. Once an addict, always an addict. I was glad. He remained his own man and did what he liked. He probably thought I would worry too. Whatever. I’m glad he did it. I drank in the smell of stale tobacco. And to think I used to hate it.

  Clare Higgins was not surprised when I phoned her on the recommendation of a friend who had some experience of alcoholism. As well as being a fine actor, Clare is a counsellor particularly skilled in dealing with addiction. While working with John at the National she detected that he had a problem. She suggested a family meeting, without John, to discuss our best way to help him. She explained to us all how we were, to use the technical term, ‘enabling’ John in his habit by covering for him and tolerating unacceptable behaviour. In the vernacular, what we needed to exercise was tough love. When he asked for help himself, and only then, she gave us the name of someone for him to contact.

  We were determined to try. Richard Eyre and his wife Sue Birtwhistle came round to Luckington for Christmas drinks. John tried to pour champagne but his hand was shaking so much it went all over the table. We all sat and watched, making no attempt to cover for him. After a dreadful Christmas the family and I left him on his own and went back to London. He made it clear he could not bear us around. Before I left, I told him if he wanted help I had something to suggest.

  It was the worst few weeks of my life. I felt like a murderer. I loved him with all my heart but my behaviour seemed so unloving. Eventually he did phone. Jo and I drove down immediately. We were shocked by his appearance. He was a physical wreck. He had injured his arm in a fall, his face was swollen and he was in agony from gout. As advised, we just gave him the number and left him to take action. It had to be his initiative. No more hand-holding, no more cover-ups. Tough love. He had to want to help himself because he had hit rock bottom. Beauchamp Colcough was waiting for his call. A miracle was about to happen.

  There is no nameplate on Beechy’s door in Harley Street and the waiting room is like any other. He himself comes to take you into his room, a short Irish leprechaun with wild black hair. Although now dressed in trendy clothes, there is still an air about him that makes it possible to believe that he once slept in the gutter. He is not your usual doctor or psychiatrist. Nor is his room typical. He has comfy old armchairs, pictures and a table full of objects which his patients have left behind for luck. It is a cosy, womb-like room.

  He knew that he had to get John’s confidence in the first one and a half hours, so Beechy used every ounce of his skill and energy to grab John’s attention. John was like him. He understood how he felt. He had been there himself. Similar backgrounds. Suffering from depression which, combined with alcohol, was like petrol on a fire. He was at dis-ease with himself. ‘You’re a miserable bugger but you’re making yourself fifty times more miserable with drink. What’s it like, fame?’

  ‘A nightmare.’

  ‘Doesn’t the money help?’

  ‘It buys me privacy, that’s all.’

  Beechy could see that John didn’t believe any of the media hype about himself. He was too real for his own good. But wrong about himself. He didn’t believe he was the real thing, he wanted to be someone else. Drink helped that.

  ‘Can I drink a bit? Control it?’

  ‘You’re not here because you’re good at it.’

  Beechy hammered home his memory losses, his never feeling well, the family disintegration, the misery.

  ‘I’m the last house in the block. Your last chance saloon. You’re here because you’re in the shit. It’s killing you. Give me a week. By the end of the week you will have made a decision. If I haven’t killed you with the coffee first.’ Beechy made foul coffee.

  As he left that first session John asked Beechy, ‘Can I do this?’

  ‘’Course you can, John.’

  ‘I’ll give it my best shot.’

  ‘You don’t do that. That’s not enough. You deliver – that’s what you always do.’

  Beechy says he spent an agonising night hoping with all his heart that John would return the next day. He did. After one week – just ten hours – Beechy had changed his life for ever. John never touched another drink. Beechy’s method is unique to him. It is propelled by a profound hatred of the harm done by alcohol. Someone dies of alcohol-related disease every ten minutes. The waste of lives it causes fires him to inspire people to change. He only met John for one week but he cared passionately about him during that time as he does all his patients.

  ‘I got lucky with John. We got lucky with each other. He touched me. A beautiful man. A gentle man. The devil was in him.’

  He gave John a packet of the coffee which they had christened Thaw’s Delight as a parting gift. As he left Beechy’s room for the last time, John tripped over his feet. Beechy’s parting words were, ‘Watch your step.’

  John described his sobriety as like a cloud lifting; it was for his family as well. Even when he was drinking heavily he managed to keep it secret from the world outside the home. Chris Kelly, his producer, had not known he had a problem until he stopped drinking and a different man emerged. ‘Happier, calmer and more at peace with himself. More generous in terms of relationships.’ As Beechy said, nobody had seen him really sober for years. John’s relief at shedding his burden was profound. He turned his back on the booze completely. Everyone
was amazed at his ability to refuse a drink, not even enjoying a good wine. He was unperturbed by people drinking around him. He had no desire to go back to where he had been, at rock bottom.

  His mind clear, he now tried to put all the work he had done with Udi into practice. It was like learning to live all over again. He risked reaching out to people even though there was a chance of rejection. It was hard for him. He was tentative. The producer Thelma Holt had suffered a great sadness in her life, so everyone was surprised when she turned up to a RADA Council meeting. Fellow members greeted her with warmth and kisses. Not John, however. He did nothing. She was walking down the stairs after the meeting when she felt a hand fall on her shoulder. She looked up into a pair of blazing blue eyes and he just said, ‘Watch yourself, girl,’ and kissed her on the cheek. She felt she was drowning in affection.

  18 May

  Had a breakthrough today. Clare V. came to Lucky – and I cooked a very good roast lunch on my own. And had a lovely time with her. We talked and actually laughed. My girlfriends are an immense solace. I have neglected friendship in my life. John never felt the need for it at home. At work, yes.

  Two years into John’s sobriety, in 1997, his father died after struggling against lung cancer. If anything was going to drive him back to the bottle this was it. When we arranged the funeral service with no priest or religious context, just a family expressing their love, I did not think John would want or be able to participate. On the day, he stood up, the man who loathed making speeches, and talked uninhibitedly about his love for Jack, whom he touchingly called his ‘brother, friend and wisest of counsellors’. He told how, when he was awarded his CBE, he phoned and said, ‘D’you want to come to the Palace, Dad?’